Patricia Ann Hanlon Clark

August 22, 1935 - March 26, 2021

Patricia Ann Hanlon Clark died in Salt Lake City, March 26, 2021, of natural causes. She was born in 1935 in New York City. She always avowed that her parents, Margaret Wurster Hanlon and George Hanlon, looked like movie stars. The family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut where the young Patricia gloried in the woodland flowers. Working at the local public library at an early age inspired her lifelong passion for reading, learning, and libraries. The oldest of seven children, she loved to list their names: Billy, Margie, Betty, George, Sharon and Michael. Patricia met and married Lealand L. Clark while they were both students in New York City. The newlyweds journeyed west to Pleasant Grove, Utah where they lived with for a short time on the leeward slope of Mt. Timpanogos, with Lealand’s parents Ellna and Lealand. Patricia and Lealand then settled in Salt Lake City where they raised their three children. Patricia was an admirable domestic engineer, and having learned about patio living, as she put it, from her time in Pleasant Grove, she always created an outdoor living space where they could spend every possible evening dining and reading by lamplight. For ten years and in all weather she enjoyed walking the ten long Salt Lake City blocks to her job, matching geologists with new opportunities. Later on, Lealand’s patients may remember her sunny presence managing his busy dermatology practice. She was an historian, a natural born gypsy and an indefatigable traveler. In retirement the couple spent two happy years exploring Europe, living in their caravan wagon. Patricia did all the planning and driving and Lealand happily carried the luggage. As a widow, Patricia maintained her blithe, joyful spirit. She lived for several years in Annapolis, Maryland with her daughter Jenny and her granddaughter Scotia. She joined the Annapolis Unitarian Universalist Church and participated in their good works. She read three morning papers. (She met Franklin Delano Roosevelt when she was a toddler. He shook her tiny hand saying, “I hope you will be a life long Democrat.” She was!) Patricia spent her final years back in Salt Lake City at Highland Cove where she was beloved by the wonderful Highland Cove staff, and by Ira; and befriended by her devoted niece Karen and her husband Mark. She was also cared for compassionately by Solstice Hospice prior to her passing. Patricia is survived by all of her siblings, her two sisters-in-law, Anna and Kathryn who consider her a third sister; her daughters Cathryn and Jennifer and their partners John and Scott; her son David and his wife Amanda; her much loved grandchildren; Henry, Eddie, Annabelle, Lily, and Scotia; twenty-eight nieces and nephews, every single one of whom truly love her, and numerous grandnieces and grandnephews. Her family and hundreds of friends and colleagues all around the world will remember Patricia as having lived life with a book in her hand, a song in her heart, and a handful of mountain wildflowers. Donations in her name can be made by check and mailed to: The Utah State Program for the Blind and Disabled, 250 North 1950 West, Suite A, Salt Lake City, UT 84116.